14 DAY TRIAL // The holiday season is coming up and you’d love to get your hands on an iPad Mini without having to pay the hefty premium price that comes attached to it.
Luckily enough, Chinese retailers have the solution to your woes. For example, NewFrog is offering a perfect replica of the iPad Mini (not the Retina Display version) at a super affordable price. The good news is that the device ships anywhere in the world form the US and Canada to Germany, Norway or Brazil.
The device is called the Chuwi V88 (granted, not a pretty name, so you’ll have to ignore that) and comes boasting a full metallic design, perfectly reminiscent of the Apple shrunken slate.
But let’s see what shoppers will be getting in terms of specifications. The Chuwi V88 features a 7.9-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels and an aspect ratio of 4:3 instead of the more common 16:10 or 16:9 we usually see in budget Android tablets.
Power comes from a Cortex A9 Quad-CPU 1.8GHz coupled with options of 1GB or 2GB of RAM, depending on what users choose to go for. As for internal storage, there’s an option between 8GB or 16GB that can be increased up to 32GB.
Other functionalities include two cameras (2MP in front and 5MP on the back), USB 2.0, Bluetooth V4.0 LE (with the 2GB of RAM version) and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.
The Chinese iPad Mini clone runs Android 4.1 out of the box and can support a plethora of media formats, making the tablet perfect for entertainment.
In terms of proportions, the Chuwi V88 managed to remain faithful to the iPad Mini blueprint being just 201 x 137 x 7.2 mm / 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.2 inches in size.
The 5000 mAH battery on the inside manages to provide a pretty low 4-5 hours of battery life, but compared to today’s offerings, this it’s pretty disappointing.
Apart from the iPad Mini reference, pricing is the biggest selling point of the Chuwi V88 and customers can grab theirs for $176.97 / €130 a pop. Order more and base price for a unit decreases.
